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Back from the dead?
Former New Jersey Gov. Jim Florio was once the most hated man in the Garden State. Now he's running for the Senate.
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[09/10/99]

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Experts debate what the United States should do to stop the carnage.
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[09/09/99]

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[09/09/99]

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Reporters, U.N. observers and anyone paying passing attention knew that the Indonesians and their local surrogates were not going to go quietly into the sunset after the recent referendum in which East Timorese overwhelmingly endorsed independence from Indonesia. The Indonesian army and police had clearly been, to varying degrees, complicit in the militia attacks and attempts to intimidate voters in the weeks leading up to the referendum.

However, the official line in the U.N. Security Council was to take Jakarta and Indonesian President B.J. Habibie at his word and trust the Indonesians to guarantee a peaceful transition. Having taken such a leap of faith, which in effect gambled with the lives of the U.N. staff and locals alike, no one is eager to 'fess up now.

In fact, Habibie might well have been sincere, but it has been clear all along that the Indonesian military is not totally under his control. Its intransigence was built into the very structure of the referendum itself. At Indonesian insistence, the referendum was not technically about independence -- it was for or against autonomy, and the Indonesians would not permit any foreign armed security presence in the province. Their position was that the Timorese had exercised their right to self-determination after the Portuguese left by "inviting" the Indonesians. That so-called invitation -- the Indonesian invasion of East Timor in 1975, left 200,000 Timorese dead. Habibie promised to treat a "no" vote as a vote for independence, but it seems that his military did not consider such pledges as binding on them.

Apparently, they thought that Jakarta had far more Timorese support than it did, and that, boosted by the pre-ballot militia mayhem, the result would be at least close enough to cry foul. Indeed, the local governor is still calling foul despite the almost 80 percent majority. A key figure is longtime Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas, who, Portuguese diplomats report, was very reasonable and flexible in the run-up to the vote, but has since reverted to his more traditional hard-line attitude, seemingly in collusion with the military and the militias.

Although the residual power of the old U.N. resolution from 1975 condemning the invasion of East Timor was crucial in forcing a vote, which the Timorese obviously welcomed, it takes more than a resolution to persuade the military. On the face of it, the international community has come in, stirred up a hornet's nest of retaliation and then deserted the people to whom it had given hope of independence after a quarter century of neglect. And unlike the previous massacres, tacitly condoned by the United States and kept off the airwaves by the brutal repression of journalists, this is happening in the stark glare of world attention.

Of course the administration's traditional scapegoat of first recourse is the United Nations. In fact, the organization's reputation has been saved by an unprecedented mutiny by U.N. staff there. U.N. rules say that at the first sign of serious danger, staff members are supposed to be evacuated. In the case of East Timor, the staff were more committed than elsewhere -- they had, after all, volunteered for a dangerous, fever-ridden posting -- and they are led by Ian Martin, the former head of Amnesty International.

Martin refused to quit and some hundred of his staff have joined him in refusing to leave the Timorese in the lurch. That raises the stakes for the United Nations. However, even now, diplomats are talking of giving time for the Indonesian military to control the situation -- as if it had not already done so. Though President Clinton has cut off ties with the Indonesian military and implored Indonesia to either gain control of the situation or invite international peacekeepers in, there is still no plan for U.N. intervention.

When the current mission of five U.N. Security Council ambassadors reports back to New York, the United States could expiate its past sins and avoid future complicity in keeping the cycle of impunity going by demanding Security Council authorization for military action. However, it will almost certainly not -- particularly if the Indonesians succeed in driving out the U.N. observers and the press from East Timor, so they that they carry on with their killing in peace.

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